National Grammar Day is Tuesday, March 4…

…and Arnold Zwicky over at Language Log is having the vapors about it.  How can he take an organization acronymed as SPOGG seriously? 

I’d be happy if my students were able to match pronouns to antecedents, avoid singular verbs with plural subjects, and write a paragraph in something other than the present tense.  Proactively renormalizing their lexical diversity to something regular folks say would help, too. (My tip:  try not to sound like a motivational speaker or a criminal defense attorney; people will think you’re a grifter.)  Meanwhile, read Eats Shoots and Leaves and do your curmudgeonly best to stamp out the inappropriate wild apostrophe–it’s your grammarly duty.